across the earliest geography:
grid that divides the city into decades
that defy reorganization:
the ghetto corner where my mother trembled
with the first cruel contraction
and hailed a cab to the rest of her life;
the slum—out of sight, out of mind— that hovers
beneath the bluff that holds up the building
where I live: the same cheap coffee
and overpriced cigarettes, the same pale
gum stuck to the soles of the same grim
shoes, the same vague scent of rubber
burning, the same lonely midnight neon;
every morning, before I head down the hill
to the 1 train, I watch the buses labor
up the incline delivering night workers
to their day jobs and day workers
to their first shift. The rivers shiver
and converge behind my eyelids.
Did I come east (or was it west) for the view?
Between these stories, the grid vanished
and I fell off the map in search of other
ways to narrate the scenery:
a town on the Potomac
a village at the foot of South Mountain
the Prairie: as incomprehensible
and crowded with misgivings as Kingsbridge.
Suddenly (or was it eventually) I wandered
(or did I set course) back (or was it forward):
I wanted to see if I could find my way around
(or I didn’t know where else to go).
Either way I’m here now:
in the dark, the lights from the bridge
paint fluorescent streaks on the water.
________________________________________
Sima Rabinowitz is the author of The Jewish Fake Book (2004) and Murmuration (2006). Her poetry and prose have appeared in Sentence, Hamilton Arts & Letters; Prairie Schooner; Witness, Trivia, Salamander, Tampa Literary Review, Water-Stone Review, and other publications. She received a 2009 BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Award from the Bronx Council for the Arts.
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